The Communists Take Over

After the 1946 election, the communists began to lose some of
their popularity, and, as the 1948 election approached, their
public support began to decline. Not leaving anything to chance,
the communists staged a coup d'etat in February 1948 rather than
wait for the scheduled May election. To ensure passivity among
military units that might object to such unconstitutional
methods, Svoboda confined all noncommunist commanders to
quarters. Various units under communist command were placed on
alert during the coup, but they were not needed and were not used
as the legitimate government was ousted and a Moscow-oriented,
communist regime was installed.

Early in the new era, the ranks of officers and NCOs were
thinned as the military forces, along with all other
institutions, were purged to ensure political reliability. The
armed forces--now called the Czechoslovak People's Army
(Ceskoslovenska Lidova Armada--CSLA)-- suffered initially from
the loss of competent personnel, but as Soviet advisers
reorganized units to fit the Soviet pattern and trained the
Czechoslovaks to use the Soviet equipment that was arriving in
quantity, the forces gradually developed a credible combat
capability.

Having cleaned the governmental institutions of opposition
elements, the communist rulers conducted another purge in the
early 1950s, this time seeking purity within the party. Svoboda,
who had joined the KSC in 1948, was among those who fell into
disfavor. Charged with treason, he was removed from his post as
defense minister and sent to work on a collective farm. Others,
however, fared worse. Rudolf Slansky, for example, who was first
secretary of the party, was executed. Slansky and Svoboda were
both rehabilitated--posthumously in the case of Slansky, but
Svoboda regained his army rank in 1955 and became commandant of
the Klement Gottwald Military Political Academy, a post he held
until his retirement from military service in 1959. Although the
morale of the troops suffered from the purges, the size of the
military establishment grew rapidly, increasing from 140,000 in
1950 to over 250,000 in 1951. These well-trained and highly
disciplined forces were considered to be capable and competent in
1955 when Czechoslovakia committed its forces to the alliance
formed under the terms of the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship,
Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance--the Warsaw Pact.

The CSLA's prestige continued to grow during the next decade
as it increasingly became a "junior partner" in Soviet military
strategy in both Eastern Europe and the Third World. Unlike
Hungary and Poland, Czechoslovakia experienced no upheavals in
1956 and was therefore considered to be, from the Soviet point of
view, the most reliable of the front-line Warsaw Pact states. The
CSLA gave support to the increased Soviet military presence in
the Third World. As the Soviet Union became a supplier of arms,
Czechoslovakia supplied training expertise to Third World
military officers. The CSLA also underwent considerable
modernization in the early 1960s as the Soviet Union redefined
the role of the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members in Warsaw Pact
military strategy. As Warsaw Pact strategy shifted from one of
massive retaliation to one of limited nuclear warfare, the
Czechoslovak military was assigned a specific role to play in the
event of war with the West--to tie down North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) forces in the southern part of the Federal
Republic of Germany (West Germany).

Yet it was precisely this enhanced prestige and concomitant
duties that gave rise to increasing discontent in what had been
considered up to that time a solidly pro-Soviet military
establishment. The modernization of the CSLA required and spawned
an officer corps whose level of education was much higher than
that of its predecessor. This educated officer corps, however,
increasingly resented the amount of time it was required to
devote to its own political education. Some officers also
believed that the country's new Warsaw Pact role unjustly favored
Warsaw Pact and Soviet defense interests at the expense of
Czechoslovakia's. Romania had previously raised this question
regarding its own role in the Warsaw Pact. According to the
Warsaw Pact's own estimates, the CSLA would take casualties of 60
to 70 percent in a war against NATO, and Czechoslovakia itself
would be turned into a nuclear battlefield. That the Soviet Union
made repeated attempts to station troops and nuclear warheads
within Czechoslovakia during this time must have exacerbated the
situation. Soviet requests were repeatedly turned down, but
tensions arose during the process.

The general dissatisfaction within the Czechoslovak military
became increasingly evident. In 1966 Czechoslovakia, following
the lead of Romania, rejected the Soviet Union's call for more
military integration within the Warsaw Pact and sought greater
input in planning and strategy for the Warsaw Pact's non-Soviet
members. At the same time, plans to effect great structural
changes in Czechoslovak military organizations were under
discussion. All these debates heated up in 1968 during the period
of political liberalization known as the Prague Spring, when CSLA
commanders put forward plans to democratize the armed forces,
plans that included limiting the role of the party
(see The Prague Spring
, ch. 1). National military doctrine became an even
greater issue when two important documents were released: the
Action Program of the Ministry of Defense and the Memorandum of
the Klement Gottwald Military Political Academy. These documents
stated that Czechoslovakia should base its defense strategy on
its own geopolitical interests and that the threat from the West
had been overstated. Although the regime of Alexander Dubcek, the
party first secretary (title changed to general secretary in
1971), was careful to reassure the Soviet Union that
Czechoslovakia would remain committed to the Warsaw Pact, Moscow
felt challenged by these developments, which undoubtedly played a
major role in the decision to invade in August 1968.

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